Incentives and Choice in Health Care

Frank A. Sloan and Hirschel Kasper

Abstract

A vast body of empirical evidence has accumulated demonstrating that incentives affect health care choices made by both consumers and suppliers of health care services. Decisions in health care are affected by many types of incentives, such as the rate of return pharmaceutical manufacturers expect on their investments in research and development, or disincentives, such as increases in copayments patients must make when they visit physicians or are admitted to hospitals. This book reviews these new results and describes recent research assessing the role of incentives in health care markets and ... More

A vast body of empirical evidence has accumulated demonstrating that incentives affect health care choices made by both consumers and suppliers of health care services. Decisions in health care are affected by many types of incentives, such as the rate of return pharmaceutical manufacturers expect on their investments in research and development, or disincentives, such as increases in copayments patients must make when they visit physicians or are admitted to hospitals. This book reviews these new results and describes recent research assessing the role of incentives in health care markets and decisions people make that affect their personal health. The contexts include demand decisions—choices made by individuals about the health care services they consume and the health insurance policies they purchase—and supply decisions made by medical students, practicing physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Gautam Gowrisankaran

Frank A. Sloan, and Hirschel Kasper

End Matter

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